I never see nothin’ when I go to the woods.
Bad English? A double negative? Not so fast. It’s not the ignorant rant of an ignorant dropout.
It’s the ignorant rant of a guy who means what he says. I’ll explain in a moment.
On this dead quiet, hot & muggy day in the middle of a July 4th weekend, I went to the woods at noon, a stupid move.
I thought, maybe I’d spot a tanager in the trees. A meadowlark in the fields. A Cooper’s Hawk watching from a branch. Cormorants at the river.
But I felt the vibe as soon as I drove in: there’d be nothing. Mid-summer, mid-day, mid-nineties; it wasn’t smart to expect much.
Wildlife was off the clock. No birds to hear or see. No deer, fox, skunk, raccoon, coyote. No wind moved the trees or weeds. The place was like a still photograph.
I thought: sure, the freakin’ holiday weekend. What d’you expect? Even nature’s outa town.
I hiked anyway, sweating in the airless heat. There was nothing to see. But, as I said earlier, I didn’t see it. Nothing, that is.
As I walked, a big spider moved across the trail in front of me. It’s not a Pileated Woodpecker. But it’s not nothing.
I bent to take a good look. Interesting. If I’d seen one like that in my bedroom, I’d have had to remove it or never get to sleep.
Might’ve been a female Black Widow. Had a round abdomen with a fleck of red.
I watched it move safely off the trail and disappear into a woodpile. I was glad for the company.
And it proved that when you go into the woods, even on the dullest of days, you never see nothing.
As Noel Coward once wrote in a song: “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.” To that list now add “Two-fisted birdwatchers.”